The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

CHAPTER XIII. CAST DOWN, BUT NOT IN DESPAIR. It takes a long time to recover from a great disaster. When at last the friends of the Atlantic Telegraph were obliged to confess that the cable had ceased to work; when all the efforts of the electricians failed to draw more than a few faint whispers, a dying gasp, from the depths of the sea, there ensued in the public mind a feeling of profound discouragement. For a time this paralyzed all effort to revive the Company and to renew the enterprise. And yet the feeling, though natural, was extreme. If they had not done all they attempted, they had accomplished much. They had at least demonstrated the possibility of laying a cable across the Atlantic Ocean, and of sending messages through it. This alone was no small triumph. So men reasoned when sober reflection returned, and at length the tide of public confidence, which had ebbed so strongly, began to reflow, and once more to creep up the shores of England. But when a great enterprise has been overthrown, and lies prostrate on the earth, the first impulse of its friends is to call on Caesar for help. So the first appeal of the Atlantic Telegraph Company was to the British Government. It was claimed, and with reason, that the work was too great to be undertaken by private capital alone. It was a matter, not of private speculation, but of public and national concern. It was, therefore, an object which might justly be undertaken by a powerful government, in the interest of science and of civilization.